Poetry

How to find your way in the dark

It was so soon after I arrived in the city
The venue’s scent an orange light
Rock dispersed by amps
Posters of faces, a cymbalheart topology, waves of thudding ink
Everyone knowing the same words differently

And it was winter, the sky light, cut, thin
What I should have brought I didn’t, my hands volcanoes
Finding it hard to breathe, harder to write, impossible to dream
The challenges seemed
To toughen with the callouses
And the chords weren’t dissonant
Just perishing

At this stage I didn’t know you at all
Like everyone
The smoking area sky clear like the back of a hand
Scattered dumpsters a frog song tableau
The night’s spilt drinks
Half-drawn stars and glowing
But we were still speaking when the light faded to ruby
When it highlighted the world in green

Do you remember the moth that landed on your cheek?
You were telling the difference
Between RAM and ROM
The space that motherboards leave
For time

As vacant as dawn
In a different city
Busy and lost
Finding out, again and again, the parity
Of cig ends
And the burning burning Moon

Joe Vaughan